Like the schoolteacher she once was, Audrey Stubbart, at 95, still pounces on errors and drills others on grammar.
She works as a newsroom proofreader, a job fast disappearing from journalism as editors rely more and more on computers."This is such a fascinating job that I don't see how anyone gets old enough to want to quit," said the former homesteader who once taught in a one-room schoolhouse.
For nearly 29 years, Stubbart has been the full-time proofreader at The Independence Examiner.
"We want every story to be read by two editors," said the 16,500-circulation paper's managing editor, Sheila Davis. "Audrey is the second catch. She doesn't usually edit for content, but she does catch things."
When she does, she frowns slightly and gets up from her computer-equipped desk in the office fray.
"We need to take the apostrophe `s' out of this headline," she told a young employee recently.
"I'm just a cranky, fault-finding old maid," she then said, sitting back down and turning the frown into a smile. "I hate to see a mistake get in."
Davis said Stubbart isn't cranky at all, even when she hears blue newsroom language.
"She's a very prim and proper lady, and newsrooms are not always prim and proper," Davis said. "She's gotten an earful occasionally, but she's never gotten upset about it."
Adjusting to her environment is nothing new for Stubbart. In 1916 she and her husband, John, took two children to the Wyoming frontier and drove in four stakes, claiming 320 acres previously occupied by buffalo and coyotes.
"I cannot recall anything but happiness that we were going to have a home of our own," she said.
Three more children came along, Stubbart taught in a one-room schoolhouse and their cattle and sheep farm expanded to 2,100 acres. Her close family life and love of books helped pass insufferably cold winters.
The Stubbarts sold the farm in 1944 and moved to Independence to be closer to relatives. Stubbart, a widow for 25 years, worked nearly two decades as a proofreader at a publishing house before reaching mandatory retirement age.
"Most companies - printing or anything else - would say, `You can't do a full day's work at your age,' and they would not let me prove I could," she said.
But the Examiner, seeking a temporary replacement at the proofreader's desk, let Stubbart sit in.
"They said, `We'll use her three months and then get someone else,"' Stubbart recalled. "But I've been here almost 29 years and they've never even tried to hire anybody else."
She enjoys teaching young reporters. "So far as I know, they all accept it very graciously," she said. "I don't try to criticize. I just try to correct."
Davis said Stubbart pushes for grammatical constructions more formal than the conversational style modern journalists use.
"She will argue her point and argue very strenuously," Davis said. "Sometimes I say, `Yeah, Audrey, you're right, but I'm going to let the reporter get away with it."'
In recent years she's written a weekly column in the Examiner. "I don't feel old, and that's why I believe they let me stay," she said. "It is a caring community. They are such precious people. This is my past, present and future."